


Morningstar

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Second Chances [11]
Category: Kolchak: The Night Stalker, MacGyver (TV 1985)
Genre: 1970s, Gun Violence, Horror, Investigations, Snakes, Starvation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-09 13:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13482651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: 1976. Few people in Chicago notice when an irritant reporter named Carl Kolchak disappears. A police officer breathes easier here, an editor groans in exasperation there.And a fresh young English assassin finds himself rather seriously inconvenienced.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Abandoned: writing Kolchak just isn't much fun. 
> 
> Also bits of this plot are going into the new GBU story.

He’s doing the kid a favour, Pete Thornton tells himself. Handing out this assignment himself, instead of delegating it. 

Because this Murdoc person (with that makeup and those glam clothes, could be either sex, though certainly very English)- this Murdoc can’t be more than sixteen, maybe even younger. So the DXS owes HIT for helping them out with that Belgravia affair; does that really mean he has to line up an assassination job for a teenager who wears too much lipstick?

According to his superior, the answer’s yes. Intelligence isn’t a pretty business. 

So he’d dug into the files. Found just the right target- not someone who carries a gun, not somebody who’ll hire goons to chase down Murdoc, after a failure. But annoying enough to warrant a hit during downtime, and nosing a little too close to Morningstar for comfort. 

Somebody who’s also unreasonably lucky. 

Maybe the gods will be kind enough to let both of them walk away from this.

“So who’s the target?” Murdoc asks, keenly questioning. Very earnest type, couldn’t fault the enthusiasm. (Or could, maybe. Far too eager.)

Pete hits a button, plays back the recording with a sense of faint nausea. 

_My name is Carl Kolchak. I’m a reporter with the INS in Chicago…._

“The kind of gadfly who nobody notices until he wins a Pulitzer,” he tells Murdoc. “Your job’s to stop him getting there. Not too obviously, please.”

“And what’s he working on, that’s made it necessary to kill him now?“

“If we wanted to tell you the details,” Pete says, lightly. “We’d go ahead and hire you.”

Maybe they will; this is exactly the kind of misfit that ends up working here. There are days Pete thinks he got this promotion just because the director was sick of being the only man at the office who wears ties. (Doctor Shaw from biomedical does as well: but then, Doctor Shaw’s a woman.)

“Depends on whether you pay as well,” Murdoc says. “I have a lady friend to support, you know.”

Pete manages not to cringe. “I wouldn’t count on that. Shall we get on with it?”

***********

It’s the first time he’s done a job for anyone besides HIT, and Murdoc isn’t sure he likes it. Nobody goes to a place called Homicide International with a request to kill their wife (well, they do, but paying the kinds of fees that suggest everybody involved is a screwed-up millionaire). He’s been able to satisfy himself that all his targets are the unpleasant type anyway. 

But this Carl Kolchak, annoying as he is, doesn’t sound like that. Just an anonymous maniac for truth and idiotic headlines, so enraptured with his delusions of the next big story that he probably doesn’t know what year it is. This isn’t the sort of person he’s going to feel right about knocking off. 

Murdoc pages through the DXS file, and reminds himself; this is for Ashton. Safe for the next six months at a French boarding school with fees astronomical enough to take in any student, no questions asked; and which provides the right type of protection. Keeping his sister safe is an expensive proposition. 

He will, quite literally, kill for her.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes a lot to down a Forrester. More than a couple of months stuck in a Minnesota prison, that's for sure. 

Okay, so she'd spent two years recovering in an asylum, and then another one recovering from the recovery (they'd done everything for her there except fix her fear of open spaces, so she'd called in a favour from her hippie days and worked on a shrimp trawler until she got over that herself). And her heart isn't as strong as it once was, and occasionally she gets crippling flashbacks- but really, Mike Forrester is fine. 

Just fine, thanks.

Certainly fine enough to work at the INS, where everybody else is also completely bananas. 

There's Tony, the editor, who threatens about once an hour to quit and go into his brother-in-law's Venetian blind business. Every half-hour, if Kolchak's around. There's Ron, who uses a gay, debonair manner to cover for his gay and terrified personality. There's Miss Emily, whose reaction to having a tough guy come in and start waving a gun around was to ask what caliber it was, so that she could put the incident into her next novel. 

And then there's Carl Kolchak, who is just something else again. 

"Rules, Miss Forrester. Find the rules of your story, and it'll write itself."

He refuses to call her Mike, so she calls him Mr Kolchak. It's a standoff. She sips her rancid pink gin, watches him drink his water and lemon. 

"Ruled paper, in fact. For instance," and he takes off his hat, fans himself with it (the bar's radiators are stuck on full, and the place is roasting despite the frigid February air outside). "I will assure you with a faith based on long and bitter experience, that the moment- the very moment- that the pattern begins to fall into place, Tony Vincenzo will be seized by an overwhelming desire to distract you with some ridiculous society story. Or an article on juvenile ballet, or painted Eastern European eggshells, or some irrelevant frippery like that. If, that is, he hasn't already done so."

"As an editor..." Mike murmurs. Just to keep the conversation moving. 

"As an editor, his only purpose," Kolchak says, knocking back his water like a shot, "is to provide you bail when the police find your fingerprints on the murder weapon. The zealous officers of the CPD don't always take the investigative process very well- in fact, if they are agreeing with you, you've undoubtedly gone astray. By the time your story's on the wire, there ought to be at least one sergeant baying for your blood."

Not exactly the sound journalistic advice she'd told him she wanted. But as her actual goal was mere entertainment, this'll do very nicely. 

"So, don't worry about angering the police. What else?"

"Library fines!" he shouts, with a piercing shout that cuts through the surrounding conversations. Everybody looks at them; he waves his hat at them, with one of his slightly piquant lapses into self-depreciation. People mutter "Kolchak..." and turn back to their drinks with practiced indifference.

"For your background?"

"For your life! Never, ever fail to pay your library fines promptly. In fact, I have a standing donation with the Harold Washington Library for a thousand dollars from the expense account every year. Vincenzo thinks it goes to the policeman's ball."

That might have more to do with their attitude towards him than just pursuing deranged stories all the time. "Yeah, what you mentioned earlier about research, I'm still not understanding that. I mean, that story about the vampire-"

"The absolutely true facts, about the vampire."

"Right. Ah...there's a lot of different myths about vampires. Suppose your hooker sweetie had been the kind that reacts to garlic instead of fire? Then what?"

"Ah," he says. Stops, upends his glass, starts again. "A simple trick, the best kind- time consuming, but simple. You identify your subject, you look it up in the card catalogue, and then- you go to the stacks and find the book that wasn't listed. There's always at least one. Occasionally two, and on a bad day I found five, but usually just one."

Now he is starting to blither. "Books in a library that aren't listed in the catalogue? What's the point of that?"

"Plausible deniability. Suppose," Kolchak says, "that you're running a government agency that officially doesn't exist. A secretive branch of the civil service, that exists to track missions for every intelligence branch of the federal government. CIA. FBI. Secret Service. Naval Investigative Service, et cetera. They're ostensible paperwork pushers, who don't even have a budget for field work- but sometimes, they can't resist a little meddling on their own. So they employ the only weapon they have: bureaucracy. Enticing libraries across America to buy and lose the right kind of books for their agents to use at need."

This is the dumbest conspiracy theory she's heard since- well, since last Thursday, when a hot dog seller had been ranting to her about the plot to keep internal combustion engines on the streets. Maybe there's something in the Chicago air. "That Naval Service, that's a real thing?"

"It most certainly is. Trust me, you'll believe in it too after being held incommunicado for forty-eight hours on a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan." He puts his hat back on, pushes his barstool back.

"This agency is starting to sound like a story in itself."

"Which is why I'm telling you all this. Because if it's between passing on my trade secrets to Ron, or an addled ex-reporter who's only been back on the job for six weeks, you're still preferable to Ron."

"Thanks so much for that vote of support."

"Also," Kolchak remarks, as he rises. "Any reporter can go insane. That's the easy part. But coming back again afterwards for the next story? And the next, and the next? That takes a certain dedication to the truth."

It's the closest thing to a personal statement he's ever made to her (damnit, she's a practiced reporter, why can't she construct any sensible picture of his interiority?) "I never mentioned that. Not even to Vincenzo."

"I make a habit of investigating the personal lives of all my acquaintances. You should too."

She still thinks he's mostly talking nonsense, until they go outside and find the photograph on the driver's seat of his Ford Mustang. 

A blurred snapshot of the INS office from the outside, clearly taken by someone riding past on the 'L' train. With a message written on the back, in scented purple lipstick. 

_Better get your affairs in order. You won't see me coming._

Kolchak's looking understandably horrified. 

"An instant Polaroid? What kind of maniac is this?"

"Um," Mike says, startles when she realises that he's seeking an actual answer. "An impatient one? A cheap one?"

"A cheap assassin...you see what this means, don't you? Who else, but the DXS? Which means," he adds, with a connoisseur's air of enjoying a fine vintage. "We're targets now. It's after us."

"Brilliant," she says, without thinking twice. 

Maybe this was too soon. Maybe she ought to go check herself back into the asylum.  

Nah. 

There's the truth to hunt down. Sanity can wait. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows on from "Hey diddle diddle".

Mike’s always vowed that if she ever came across an unexpected man in her room, she’d drop-kick ‘em first and ask questions afterwards. And maybe she doesn’t wholly buy Kolchak’s paranoia, but it still behoves her to be on guard. 

“Ow! Geez, Mike!”

“Jack? I’m sorry!”

In the half-light, now that she’s looking, she can just about make out the figure sprawled against her carpet. Her brother gulps in a breath, evidently winded. 

“Sorry,” she says again, and helps him onto the bed. “It’s not like I had any warning, you know.”

“I’d have called ahead if you’d given us a number,” Jack says, coughing. She can’t tell now if he’s recovered but wants sympathy, or if she really did kick him that hard; but it’d be impolite to press the point. “You know how much it bothers Mom, that you never stay in touch- what happened to your stint in the Gulf of Mexico, huh? Those fishermen said that you’d left months ago.”

“Four months, that’s all. I worked my way up the Mississippi and threw down an anchor at the first newspaper that’d hire me. Well, a wire service- the INS is as good a place as any for me to get back in the game.”

He casually pulls the window shade up, revealing her crass little room (all over clutter, even in the short time she’s been here). Inspects a rapidly developing bruise, clicks his tongue. 

“You promised you were gonna give up the dangerous stuff.” 

No amount of conversation will convince Ruth Forrester that journalism isn’t dangerous, after Mission City. The kinds of stories she writes, it’s a fair cop. 

“That promise was extorted from me under circumstances of undue pressure- look, would you give up the business with Uncle Charlie, just because our folks asked you to?” 

He can’t help grinning at that; the cheeky Dalton smile that wins him everything from poker games to a ready supply of lovers (works on just about anybody Jack fancies, except the man he really has his heart set on.) Her brother all over. Somebody would have taken him in eventually, Mike’s sure of that; but she’s glad it was her family. 

“Nah- but then, I’ve never had as rough a time of it in stir as you did. Honestly, I have to ask. Why’d you lie to me?”

This isn’t the conversation she wanted to have tonight. Or at all, but definitely not in the middle of this story, not when she’s finally regaining her self-confidence and independence. She risks hedging. “It was more in the way of not mentioning, really- did you have dinner yet? There’s this Lebanese place across the street, they do a wonderful hummus.”

“Quit tryin’ to distract me. I was putting this off until you’d recovered, but if you’re feeling good enough to be playing reporter again, you’re good enough to answer a couple questions.”

“Don’t you dare,” Mike snaps. “Playing reporter? I’m a serious journalist!”

“...sorry,” Jack says, very mild now. “But sometimes I wish you’d gone into botany after all- c’mon, if you’d told me you were doing the prison story for real, I’d have made sure you’d have been okay. Got in touch with a contact or two. Had myself arrested to get inside, if necessary.”

She leans back against the pillows. Her own set: boarding houses never provide good ones, she’s found. 

“But any other way, it wouldn’t have been true to the story.” Her only possible defense, so she’ll have to make the most of it. “I wanted to get the feel of it, the hopelessness, the uncertainty. The crushing despair- everything, okay? If I’d known you were coming it wouldn’t have been the same-”

_her heart thumping away, too much space, too much light-_

“I had to,” Mike concludes, flatly. “C’mon. The article was more than worth it.”

“I suppose. But it hit me where it hurt, you know? I mean, you and Ruth and David take me in, raise me and everything, and the one time I might be able to repay the favour- you don’t even let me try.”

“Because it wouldn’t have been trying,” Mike says. “You wouldn’t have stopped at anything to rescue me, I knew that. Y’see? Matter of too much faith in you, not too little.”

“Flatterer,” Jack says. “Okay then. But you’re just lucky I always fall for it.”

“Huh?”

“Well, I asked you for a reason, and you gave me one, and I still think you’re dumb as a bag of bricks, but- hey, I guess it mattered to you,” Jack says, relaxed now. “So fine, we’re good. How about this restaurant, then? I already had some deep-dish pizza but Lebanese sounds neat-”

“...is that it? You’re not going to go all passive-aggressive on me, like Mom would?”

“If there’s one thing Charlie taught me,” Jack says, softly, “it’s that life’s too short to mess around sulking. If you’re gonna forgive someone, do it absolutely- and you’re my sister. Talked your parents into giving me a home, and everything. I couldn’t be mad at you if I wanted.”

“I couldn’t have picked a better brother,” Mike murmurs. “Goes both ways, you know. You think I’d have stuck to my guns over the journalism thing, if you weren’t there to back me up?”

“Aw. You’re a pretty tough cookie, you’d have made it.”

_Not as tough as you’d think. Not so sure of myself as I should be, not quite the fearless older sister you remember. But you keep right on believing in her, Jack, because I’ll get back to that eventually._

_Just need some time, that’s all._

************

By dint of nerve, knowing when to talk and when to shut up, and pretending he knows it all already, Murdoc's contrived to bluff his way into the upper echelons of the Great Game. Both easier and harder than it sounds.

(There's a reason that he thinks, ten years later, that it's possible to turn a suburban barista into an expert assassin. If he could pull it off sans assistance, MacGyver can certainly do the same with help.)

So nobody thinks they have to teach him anything. Just as well, otherwise he wouldn't last very long in this profession- but it can be unnerving. Doing trapeze without a net is only physical fatigue, rocket science is only mental- he's doing the equivalent of both, with his life and his sister's on the line if it goes wrong. It might happen any day: but if he does go down, it'll be on his terms. 

Like this habit with his second-hand Polaroid (Ashton's twelfth birthday present to him, for which she'd swapped their mother's wedding dress at a pawn shop. That had caused an unpleasant scene.) First time out, he'd adopted photography as a cover. Second time, he'd done it because it'd worked the first time. Now, stalking his victims for photographs is a ritual, one he wouldn't care to do without. 

"HIT did not mention," Pete Thornton says curiously, as he adjusts a tacky and oversized tie, "that you were in the habit of leaving warnings."

"No. Not a chatty lot, are they?" Come to think of it, the tie's perfectly in keeping with present American fashion, which means laughably outdated. Murdoc permits himself a slight shudder. If people are going to be ostentatiously establishment, they could at least have some taste about it. "For the kinds of people who won't pay attention, they don't do any harm."

"Maybe there's hope for you after all."

It's an off-hand, almost thoughtless comment, and not the sort that Murdoc was expecting from a man who's given him a murder assignment. For a moment, he's tempted to respond in kind. Be friendly back. Ask for help, perhaps.

"I think that was too late about twelve murders ago," Murdoc says, quite thoughtfully. 

His contact winces and turns back to the business at hand.

(Pete thinks about that moment a great deal, in following years. Murdoc doesn't. 

After all: if he wanted to be fobbed off with platitudes, he'd have stayed in Sussex.)


End file.
